


Moving On

by Kaesa



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Challenge Response, Christmas, Community: key_phrase_fics, Gen, Ghosts, POV Minor Character, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best Christmas gift anyone ever gave Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Key Phrase Fiction's Christmas challenge, with the prompt "And ghosts that failed learn time forgives."

The Headless Hunt had rejected him _again_. The _bloody_ Headless Hunt -- or, well not so bloody, Nicholas supposed. But annoying nonetheless.

It wasn't that it was important, he knew, but he needed _something_ to do with his afterlife. It was so boring. So _ridiculously_ dull.

He sighed, remembering Christmases when he was alive; beautiful food and beautiful music and warmth and light and... here he was, cold and dead, and having barely tasted a thing for centuries. He wanted to move on; if only he'd been _brave_. But he'd died unpleasantly, and painfully, and fearfully. And he had lost his chance at Dumbledore's "next great adventure."

The Fat Friar, of course, was cheerful -- he _liked_ Christmas, after all, and Nicholas didn't know how he did it; the ghost seemed almost _alive_. He was so jovial.

In contrast, the Bloody Baron scowled around at his House as though it were a prison, and Nicholas might've sympathized, but there _was_ all that unpleasant blood, and the way the man _looked_at you,_ well_. He shuddered -- he'd been lucky; decapitations were so much cleaner than head wounds.

The Grey Lady of Ravenclaw, however, was the most puzzling.

"And what do you want for Christmas, Sir Nicholas?" she asked him.

"…oh, you know. The usual." He tried to look cheerful. It was hard when you were mildly transparent.

"The Baron says he'd like to leave," she said. 

"Leave what? The castle?" He frowned. "But the Ministry's decreed--"

"You know what I mean. There are some of us who can't bear to leave this earthly plane," she said. "I'll admit I'm one of them.  ...some of us, well. Had better before they go mad." She gave him a pointed look.

"I'm not mad," said Nick.

"You haven't lost your head yet." And with that, she glided off into the stacks of the library. A most puzzling statement indeed.

Come Christmas Eve, however, there was a strange presence in the air of the castle. The leftover students were too busy with their friends and their feast to notice, and the teachers were trying to preserve what was left of school rules in a half-empty school.

But Nicholas noticed it. And he thought he'd seen a sort of light in the sunken eyes of the Baron.

So when the Grey Lady summoned him at midnight, Nicholas had a sort of hunch that Something was going to happen.

She grinned, as he saw the Baron come through the other wall. "Well, what is it?" the Baron asked. Nick had never heard him speak before; he had a surprisingly aristocratic voice.

"I arranged something with some of my alumni at the Department of Mysteries," she said. "I think you'll find that you're forgiven your past fears." 

A white glow began to come over the room -- less transparent than the ghosts.

"For now, I'm staying here, and now," she said. "But you two? You can go on. Happy Christmas."

Nick turned to the Baron and blinked. "...happy Christmas?"

He nodded formally, his terrible staring eyes not quite so terrible anymore. "And the same to you, Sir Nicholas."


End file.
